Album Themes

American History X

AllMusic Review
by William Ruhlmann

Art of Noise co-founder Anne Dudley won a 1997 Academy Award for her score for The Full Monty, but is back with a very different project here, composing music for the controversial drama American History X. In her liner notes, she says that director Tony Kaye told her wanted the music to be "big and elegiac," and to achieve that, she's employed both a full orchestra and a boys' choir that gives the music the appropriate size and tone. One might add words like "majestic" and "stirring" to the description, and also "traditional," a word not much associated with as original a composer as Dudley.